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Africa Poor & America Poor

It is pretty easy to look at the homeless in the United States and say, “Yeah, they’re poor, but they aren’t as poor as the starving people in…” (name impoverished country, usually in Africa).

Certainly, if we are talking about physical depravity and lack of what helps us survive, those in the poorest countries in the world are worse off than the homeless. The homeless are resourceful, and often live off the toss-offs of the wealthy country they live in. A dumpster behind a single grocery story in the United States has better and more plentiful food than what is offered a whole city of beggars in a poor country. In impoverished cities or nations, the problem is scarcity, and while some use that scarcity for their own advantage, the major problem is a universal one.

But if you look at the poor people of other nations, you can see a major difference between them and the poor of the United States:

Do you notice the differences? The non-Americans were all obviously starving, that’s one difference. But the more obvious difference is that the non-Americans are with others, working with others, but the Americans are alone. This is probably just a result of the style of the photographers, but it also reflects a reality both live with. The poverty of Africa is a poverty of resource to certain communities. The poverty of America is a poverty of community which results in scarcity.

The poverty of the homeless person or of the welfare mom or of the mentally ill is not a lack of food, but a lack of meaningful community. Poverty is not primarily an economic reality. Rather, it is a social reality that has an economic result. The poverty of the third world is a poverty of a community. The poverty of the United States is a poverty of individuals.

The poverty of the United States, which might also include starvation, but certainly includes dangers of hypothermia and dehydration and sickness due to stress and unsanitary conditions but also has an added layer of daily rejection from society.

Not only is a poor individual in the US facing a lack of their survival needs, but they also have people telling them how bad they are, forcing them to move on a regular basis, assumptions that they are criminal and people telling them how they are not doing enough. They are rejected by a whole society, outcasts from the community, forced to not only be poor but to be isolated.